Rise of State Power
The Rise of State Power lasted from about 1204 AD until 1337 AD. It began after the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade. It then ended on the eve of the Hundred Years’ War between France and England. The High Middle Ages was the formative period in the history of the modern Western European state. The kings in France, England, Spain and Portugal consolidated their power, and established enduring nation states. By contrast, the German Empire would move in the opposite direction, from a strong Holy Roman Emperor to a fragmented political structure of local principalities. Meanwhile in the east, the ferocious nomadic Mongol tribes from the steppes north of China were united under the leadership of Genghis Khan, who launched a journey of conquest, unmatched in its speed and extent since the exploits of Alexander the Great. History High Middle Ages The 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries were a time of tremendous growth throughout Europe. Approximate estimates suggest that a Europe of about forty million people in 1000, almost doubled to reach a peak of about seventy-three million around 1300. One explanation lies in agriculture. More food was obtained by bringing more land under cultivation and by increasing its productivity. Huge forests were gradually cleared, and land was reclaimed from marshy areas or even the sea. Agricultural practices improved with more systematic crop-rotation, some new crops, a more efficient yoke for plowing, and more pronounced agricultural specialisation. A money economy was spreading slowly into the countryside, and serfdom gradually declined; further accelerated by the labour shortages caused by the Black Death. With more cash crops and trade, towns steadily grew, especially the long established towns: Paris may have had about 200,000 inhabitants in 1340; Genoa, Venice and Florence about 100,000; London about 80,000; and Ghent 60,000. Some cities grew on their reputation for specialised production, such as the fine textiles of Ghent in Flanders and the wine of Bordeaux. By 1300, all the major European cities were linked in a complicated trade network: the Italian city-states importing salt, sugar, spices, silks and other luxuries from the eastern to the rest of Europe; England exporting wool; Flanders exporting cloths; Germany exporting timber; The Rus exported furs and beeswax; Norway exported fish; and all the Mediterranean exported wine and oil. Cathedral building was a major expression of medieval technology. Their architecture posed complex engineering problems and in solving them, the engineer was slowly to emerge from the medieval craftsman, though more through accumulated experience than a true scientific method. The Gothic style originated in France in the first half of the 12th century, notably the Cathedral of Sens (1130–62) and Abbey of St-Denis (1130-44), and gradually superseded the earlier Romanesque tradition. Arguably more important still was the intellectual revitalisation of Europe provided by the birth of medieval universities. Bologna (1088), Paris (1150), and Oxford (1167) were the first of them; by 1400 there were fifty-three more. Most were founded for the the training of the clergy and civil servants. Their lectures were given in Latin, the lingua franca of educated men, studying law, medicine, theology and philosophy, often based of classical texts translated from Islamic sources. Only gradually did vernacular literature break through the barrier that restricted creativity to Latin, with authors like Dante (d. 1321), Petrarch (d. 1374) and Giovanni Boccaccio (d. 1375) in Italy, and Geoffrey Chaucer (d. 1400) and William Langland (d. 1386) in England. Rise of France Since Hugh Capet (987-996 AD) ascended to the French throne towards the end of the Viking Age, the Capetian kings were hardly more than crowned lords. France was a patchwork feudal territories, and the kings real authority extended little beyond the Paris basin. Meanwhile, many of his vassals were some of the most powerful rulers of Western Europe, none more so than the Dukes of Normandy who were also kings of England. Nevertheless, the Capetian dynasty greatly extended its control in France during two reigns, of grandfather and grandson, who between them ruled for a span of nearly ninety years. The grandfather was Philip II (1180-1223). When he came to the throne, the greater part of France owes allegiance not to Paris but to Westminster. King Henry II of English had among his hereditary possessions much of western France, extending from Normandy, through Brittany, Maine, Anjou, Touraine, and Aquitaine to the Pyrenees; all acquired by decades of judicious marriages within the House of Plantagenet. The complex game of feudal dynastic marriages would throw up many such anomalies, culminating in Charles V Habsburg, Germanic Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain. Technically the English king was the feudal vassal of the French king in these territories, but between such powerful rulers this was little more than a nicety. In his early reign, King Philip skillfully played upon the bitter rivalry of Henry's son to stir up rebellion against their father. The power struggle continued during the reign of Henry's successor Richard the Lionheart, with Philip trying to exploit his long absence on the Third Crusade to extend his territory. However, once the great warrior king returned from the East all these gains were subsequently lost. Philip had much more success against Richard's ineffectual younger brother King John of England (1199-2016). In 2002, he used feudal pretext, the failure of the English king to present himself when summoned, as an excuse to confiscate Normandy and all English lands north of the Loire River; not only extending his control of France, but depriving John of easy access to the Continent. The Anglo-French War (1202–14) that followed was a long but decisive victory for King Philip. The Anglo-Norman army retreated to their castles, which eventually fell after protracted sieges. The war ended with the defeated an anti-French alliance at the Battle of Bouvines (1214 AD). In addition for the former English territories, Philip also made alliances that brought under royal control Artois, Valois and parts of Flanders. Meanwhile, a Crusade against a radical Christian sect, the Albigensians, brought in much of southern France. By his death, Philip had made great strides in uniting France The grandson was Louis IX (1226-1270), who came to the throne at the age of 12, after the short reign of his father. Louis' contribution was to transform France into a truly centralised kingdom. It was a task for which he was well suited. A measure of his reputation for wisdom and piety among his contemporaries is that the English accepted Louis as arbitrator in the Second Barons' Revolt between Henry III and his nobles. The piety of Louis was very much in the spirit of his time; after his death he was canonised a saint. He created one of the most spectacular of Gothic buildings, the royal chapel of Sainte Chapelle, which has one of the finest stained glass collections anywhere in the world. And he twice went on Crusade, dying in Tunisia during the second expedition. Throughout his long reign, Philip kept a close watch over his most powerful nobles, successfully bringing them to heel, especially by preventing their private wars that had long plagued the country. He further weakened the nobility by granting royal privileges and liberties to towns and cities. He ran an honest and efficient administration and justice system, banning antiquated practices such as trial by ordeal and introducing the presumption of innocence. Legislation was also subject to a new institution; the French parliament (the Estates-General). Louis' successors presided over the most powerful kingdom in a rapidly developing Europe, and French culture was its glittering source of inspiration. In intellectual matters, Paris had a commanding reputation by the 12th century, through schools attached to the cathedral of Notre Dame and to monasteries in the city. In 1231, Pope Gregory IX licences the Sorbonne University as an independent institution, and it soon became Europe's most famous centre of education; Thomas Aquinas taught there from 1257, one of the Catholic Church's greatest theologians and philosophers. France enjoyed a similar lead in artistic fields. The Gothic style of architecture originated there, many of the greatest examples of cathedrals were in French cities. Pioneering developments in sculpture and stained glass formed part of the same burst of creativity. Meanwhile, French literature invented and elaborated on the medieval theme of romance, in epic poems such as the Chansons de Geste and in the troubadours of Provence. The prolonged Medieval power struggle between Church and state, that began in imperial Germany with the Investiture Controversy of 1076 and continued with the Crusades and the Thomas Becket controversy in England, in many ways culminated in France. From 1296, King Philip IV (1285-1314) was involved in a struggle with Pope Boniface VIII about whether the king had the right to discipline and levy taxes on the clergy in his realm. The feud reached its peak from 1302, when Philip enlists the French parliament composed of clergy, nobles, and city leaders in support of his cause. Pope Boniface retaliated by issuing the papal bull Unam Sanctam, one of the most extreme statements of papal supremacy ever made. Boniface was on the verge of excommunicating King Philip, when French envoys in Italy working to undermine the pope took a bold step. In September, the pope was arrested and held prisoner for three days; the aging pope died a month after his release. Phillip then succeeded in getting a new French Pope elected. The episode severely dented the prestige of the papacy, while Philip IV's power seemed enhanced. A few years later in 1312, he even forced the pope to comply with his wishes to destroy the great order of the Knights Templars, to whom he was deeply indebted. By the end of Philip’s reign, France was unmistakably the heart of Europe. For much of the 14th century, France kings appeared to have the papacy in their pocket, almost literally. There were seven French Popes in an unbroken succession spanning seventy-three years, and from 1309 these Popes were based not in Rome but on French soil, at Avignon. Yet, the early death of Philip's son Charles IV ushered in the first succession crisis in France for over three centuries and set her on the path to the Hundred Years' War. British Isles In the midst of the Crusading Age, two enduring English habits were emerging: competition for the throne and bickering between royalty and the Church. In 1120, the line of Norman kings was thrown into doubt by the death of the only legitimate son of Henry I (1100-1135 AD) in the shipwreck of the White Ship. Henry had little choice but to name his daughter Maude as his heir. However on his death, most of the English nobles ignored Maude’s claim and crowned Henry’s nephew Stephen (1135-1154) king of England in Westminster Abbey. Stephen's entire reign was consumed by a bitter civil war with Maude and the local nobility; The Anarchy '''(1135-54). The desultory war dragged on for many years with neither side able to secure an advantage, causing widespread devastation across the realm. By the early 1150s, both the nobies and the Church mostly wanted a long-term peace, and pressured Stephen into negotiations. In 1153 an accommodation was reached where Stephen retained the throne, but adopted as his heir Maude's son, Henry Plantagenet. During his reign, Henry II (1154-1189) worked tirelessly to reassert the kings authority over England, which was in a state of lawlessness after the years of civil war. His first task was to demolish all the unauthorised castles that unruly nobles had built for themselves throughout. Next, Henry improved upon the standards of administration: strengthening the powers of the circuit judges; and formalising the nation’s finance committee by introducing the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was a subtle shift away from feudalism towards a nation state. Meanwhile, after the Investiture Crisis, the power struggle between Church and state was one of the great issues of the day throughout Europe. Henry conceived what must have seemed at the time a neat solution to this problem; he appointed his trusted friend '''Thomas Becket as Archbishop of Canterbury. If he anticipated a compliant archbishop, he was quickly disabused. Becket vigorously defends ecclesiastical privileges, and rejected Henry's insistence that clergy who committed secular crimes should be prosecuted by circuit judges, just like any other citizen. The quarrel soon escalated, until Becket fled the country in 1164 to safety in a monastery in France. When Henry tried to appoint a new Archbishop of Canterbury, from exile Becket suspended all the bishops involved, with papal support. This drastic action prompted an apparent reconciliation, with Becket returning to Canterbury in early December 1170. However, he refused to reinstate the suspended bishops. News of this prompted the Henry’s careless and fatal question: "would no one avenge him of this meddlesome clerk?” Four knights provided a literal answer. On 29 December 1170, they murdered Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. This outrage made Becket's tomb one of Europe's main centres of pilgrimage; the martyr was canonised in 1173. King Henry had little option but to do a humiliating public penance at Becket's shrine, and concede on all his points on ecclesiastical control. Meanwhile, Henry had eight legitimate children, and had long been plotting to get his hands on Ireland to provide lands for his younger sons; in 1155, Pope Adrian IV issued him a Papal Bull, granting him the right to bring rebel Celtic Church in Ireland to heel. The "800 years" of English rule in Ireland nominally began in 1169, when an army of Anglo-Norman nobles landed near Wexford, at the invitation of Dermot MacMurrough, who had recently been ousted from his throne in the petty-king of Leinster. Led by Richard de Clare, better known as Strongbow, the Anglo-Normans quickly captured Wexford, Waterford, and Dublin. From the start the Anglo-Norman lords were independent of mind. In 1175, Henry II agreed the Treaty of Windsor with the Gaelic petty-kingdoms of Ireland, acknowledging the limits of his conquered territory. Yet the Anglo-Norman expansion and Irish counteroffensives continued. Gradually the Norman feudal domains settled down as just more petty-kingdoms among many, until Henry VIII saw fit to once more send armies across the water. By the end of his reign, Henry controlled England, nearly half of Ireland, and some of Wales, as well as much of northern and western France as Duke of Normandy also. This feudal anomaly where the King of England was nominally a vassal of the King of France was the root cause of the Hundred Years' War. Despite upheavals, England had retained an impressing cohesion since it was first consolidated under Edgar (959-975). However, the three problems that lurked at the heart of the English monarchy came to a head during the reign of King John (1199-1216); how did succession work, what was the balance between the king and the church, and what were the limits on royal power especially when it came to taxes. The early troubles of John’s reign, the loss of his lands in France and a quarrel with Pope Innocent III, encouraged the discontent of his feudal vassals to reach dangerous levels. In May 1215, rebellious nobles launch a civil war with even the city of London joining the rebels; the First Barons' War (1215-17). In June, with the Archbishop of Canterbury acting as a moderator between the sides, John fixed the royal seal to the document that the barons place before him; Magna Carta. The document attempted to codify the rights and obligations of feudal society; it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown. Having accepted the document under duress, John refused to comply with its conditions, and the civil war continued until his death. The succession of John’s nine-year-old son as Henry III (1216–1272), brought a pause during which more moderate council prevailed. However, the feudal nobles who form the young king's regency enjoyed the experience of direct power, a power, once achieved, which was not lightly given up. Into this tense situation came Simon de Montfort, a clever, charming and morally flexible Norman noble. He befriended Henry and married his sister, becoming the Earl of Leicester. Within a few short years, he’d transformed himself into a proper English noble and led them in the next phase of conflict with the English king. When Henry III desperately needed the help of the nobles to balance his finances, Montfort forced the king to accept the so-called Provisions of Oxford, another severe curtailment of royal power; the king must rule according to the advice of a privy council of fifteen. Like his father, Henry rapidly backtracks from his commitment, leading to the Second Barons' Revolt (1264-1267 AD). In a brilliant engagement at the Battle of Lewes (1264) against a larger royal army, Simon de Montfort captured both Henry and his heir, the future Edward Longshanks. For a year, Montfort assumed the government of England as leader of the privy council and through parliament in London. However, his enemies contrived to help Prince Edward escape; now aged twenty-six and a formidable soldier. Edward defeated and killed Simon de Montfort at the Battle of Evesham (1265), and restored Henry to the throne. Edward Longshanks (1272-1307 AD) would prove himself a very different kind of monarch; his main interest in life was warfare. He summoned parliament on a reasonably regular basis throughout his reign, helping to establish it as a permanent institution. He also invited to parliament people of lesser rank than the magnates of nobility and church; knights from the shires and leading citizens from the towns. This was usually when he had pressing needs for funds to ensure any agreement would be honoured by their county or borough. It was also the the origin of the House of Commons. He had his own reasons to delegate some power to parliament, for he would spend much of his reign on military campaign in Wales and Scotland. In Celtic Wales, years of almost constant warfare among the Welsh petty-kingdoms had allowed the English kings to seize much of the southern coast of the country and claim the rest as vassals of the English crown. Nevertheless during the 13th century, Welsh rulers from three successive generations of the royal family of Gwynedd gradually unified the Welsh petty-kingdoms of the peninsula and were accepted as rulers of all Wales. However, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, acknowledged prince of Wales by Henry III, seemed almost to go out of his way to affront Edward Longshanks: he failed to attend the coronation or do homage, and married the daughter of Simon de Montfort, the leader of a rebellion against his father. In 1277 Edward moved decisively against his recalcitrant vassal. Three English armies marched into Wales, and Llywelyn and his forces were soon compelled to surrender. The treaty signed in November at Conway significantly reduced the territory of the Welsh kingdom. However in 1282, there was a widespread uprising in Wales headed by Llywelyn. Edward reacted as forcefully as before, with another invasion of Wales, this time a full-scale war of conquest, during which Llywelyn was killed. The conquest was emphasised by granting his own eldest son and heir Edward II the title of Prince of Wales, and the building of a series of imposing castles. Overawed by these clenched stone fists, Wales remained quiet for a century until the time of Owain Glyn Dwr. Trouble with Scotland flared up shortly after Edward's suppression of the Welsh. Relations between England and Scotland had been calm in recent decades, and the Scottish nobles even accept Edward as arbitrator between the various claimants to the Scottish throne when it falls vacant in 1290. His choice of John de Balliol received widespread assent. However in the aftermath, the English king's increasingly treated the new king of Scotland and the Scottish nobility in general as his vassals. Scottish resentment was expressed in 1295 when they formed an alliance with France, known as the Auld Alliance. This prompted Edward’s swift and brutally effective invasion of Scotland in 1296. King Balliol was imprisoned in the Tower of London, and the sacred Scottish coronation seat, the Stone of Scone, taken to Westminster Abbey. However, seriously short of funds, Edward could not follow-up his conquest with the building of costly castles as he did in Wales, and the very next year, a popular uprising emerged under the leadership of William Wallace. Confronting an English army at the Battle of Sterling Bridge (September 1297), Wallace enticed the enemy across the narrow bridge over the river Forth, and then attacked so forcefully that nearly all the English on the northern bank were killed. The situation brought Edward north in person in 1298, and at the Battle of Falkirk (July 1298), Edward inflicted a devastating defeat on the Scots, in an early example of the power of the longbow. Wallace himself evaded capture until 1305, when he was hanged-drawn-and-quartered at the Tower of London. However from 1306, Edward was confronted by a newly proclaimed Scottish king, Robert de Bruce (1306-29). This brought Edward north again, but he died just short of the border near Carlisle. His son Edward II (1307-1327) lacked his father's mettle, and Bruce’s victory over him at the Battle of Bannockburn (1314) essentially established Scottish independence, which was formally acknowledged in the Treaty of Northampton (1328). The unruly mood of England’s nobles returned during the ineffectual reign of Edward II. Parliament twice succeeded in banishing his unsuitable favourite Piers Gaveston; with whom historians assumed Edward was having a homosexual relationship. Each time the young man was soon recalled, until the nobles murdered him in 1312. In 1327, Edward II was forced by his wife Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer to renounce the throne in favour of their fifteen-year-old son, Edward III (1327-77); Edward II would die in captivity less than a year later, almost certainly murdered. For four years, Mortimer and Isabella ruled in the young king's name, but in 1330 Edward III declared his independence in forceful manner. With a small number of trusted men, he took Mortimer by surprise at Nottingham Castle and had him executed. During his reign, Edward renewed the war with Scotland. Though he won victories such as the Battle of Dupplin Moor (1332 AD), forces loyal to King David II of Scotland gradually regained control of the country; Scottish independence was eventually settled again in the Treaty of Berwick (1357 AD). He would also renew was between England and France in the Hundred Years' War. Spanish Reconquest The 11th and 12th centuries saw the Christian kingdoms experienced a bewildering series of merges and division from which emerged the four stable kingdoms of Aragon, Castile, Navarre and Portugal which control the northern half of Spain. In 1179, the kings signed the Treaty at Cazorla, establishing zones of operation in their effort against the Muslims: Portugal attacking down the west coast, and Aragon the east coast. The decisive phase of the Christian reconquest began with the crushing defeat of the Muslims at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212). It was followed by further conquests of Cordoba (1236 AD), Valencia (1238 AD), and Seville (1248 AD). After this Christian thrust to the south, only the southern tip of the peninsula remained in Muslim hands as the Kingdom of Granada. The mountainous territory made it difficult to conquer, so it would remain for more than two centuries. In 1246, Granada made a treaty of coexistence with Castile, agreeing to pay a large annual tribute. And so they were left relatively free to enjoy a civilised existence and enjoy the final flowering of the Muslim culture of Spain. The result can be seen in the palace fortress Alhambra completed in 1358; its restful courtyards of Moorish arches and playful fountains now seem the epitome of the Muslim culture of Spain. Nevertheless, this Muslim enclave was an affront to the conscience of Castile, that increasingly dominated its Christian neighbours; Granada was finally conquered in 1492. Fragmentation of Germany During the 12th and 13th centuries, while France, England, France, Spain, and Portugal were developing strong centralised monarchies, Germany moved in the opposite direction. Many different factors weakened Germany’s cohesion. In part it resulted from the paradox of an elected feudal overlord. The Holy Roman Emperor’s position, not based on conquest or first-born son, must depend instead on a network of negotiated alliances, which meant in brutal reality of feudal politics concessions. Meanwhile, the rapid growth in trade and wealth in Germany, thanks to networks of trading alliances like the Hanseatic League and part of a general pattern of increasing European prosperity, led to a similar growth in independence and competitiveness. At the same time, the seemingly never ending struggles with the Popes that began with the Investiture Controversy continued to sap the imperial authority. It was further exacerbated when Emperor Frederick II (1220-1235) became king of southern Italy and Sicily as well Germany, thanks to the dynastic marriage of his parents. Frederick was excommunicated no less than three times, while at the same time spending most of his attention on incorporating Sicily into his empire, establishing there the first true professional bureaucracy in Western Europe since the fall of the Western Roman Empire; borrowed largely from the Muslims. After Frederick’s death, the empire lost any real political meaning, and the title of Holy Roman Emperor was valued only for its prestige. Between 1254 and 1273, the German princes failed to elect any emperor and for the next century the electors chose kings from several different families. Not till the coronation of Charles IV in 1346 was there the start of another dynasty; the House of Luxembourg. Meanwhile, the fragmented political structure of Germany had certain advantages for the larger German towns. In many ways, the cities became similar to the contemporary city-states in Italy, but more numerous and more inclined to group together in large trading alliances. A document of 1422 listed seventy-five free German cities including: Aachen, Cologne, Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Dortmund, Frankfurt, Regensburg, Augsburg, Nuremberg, and Ulm. Dynastic politics may have had the effect of making the Germany less cohesive, but the energies of the German people achieved at the same time a marked expansion of the realm. This was achieved in the steady push eastwards into the less developed lands occupied by the Slavs and Prussians. The German advance was gradual, achieved first by peasant settlement and then the granting of feudal rights and bishoprics in newly occupied territories. By these means the ancient German duchies were expanded: Swabia absorbed much of what is now Switzerland; and Bavaria extended spasmodically over Austria. Only the Prussians significantly resisted German attempts at conquest and conversion until the arrival of the Teutonic Knights. Princely Rule in Italy The governments of these cities gradually fell into the hands of extremely effective oligarchies, notably Venice, Milan, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Siena and many others. With the Islamic world and the Byzantine Empire both enjoying Golden Ages during the 10th and early 11th centuries trade flourished. Trade brought both growth in population and prosperity, that gave rise to a more sophisticated and commercialised culture, as well as the emergence of early organised capitalism. The oligarchies of noble families who controlled the Italian city-states were constantly feuding with each other, and this gradually led towards authority in each city being placed in the hands of one man. By the end of the 12th century, nearly all the north Italian appointed a powerful mayor to run the city's affairs, who was appointed for a fixed term, rarely more than a year. But once the machinery of individual rule was in place, a more permanent and even perhaps hereditary princely ruler becomes a likely option. The Visconti of Milan were an early example; Matteo Visconti was mayor from 1287 to 1322, and the post was declared hereditary in 1349. Other cities followed suit. Nevertheless, Florence remained technically a republican commune until the Medici became hereditary dukes in 1532, and self-perpetuating oligarchy of Venice preserved power until the 18th century. Meanwhile, competition and warfare between the city-states was long, intermittent, and bewildering. From the 13th century, the citizens preferred to employ foreign mercenary armies or condottiere to fight their battles rather than go to war themselves. One of the first was the Great Company, numbering some 7000 heavily armed cavalry and 1500 infantry, and first led by a German knight, Werner von Urslingen. Engagements between these armies were often elaborate rituals, in which little harm was done except to the pockets of their employers. The condottiere would eventually die-out by the late 15th century as mounted knights became relics of a medieval past with the change in the art of war to infantry and guns. Mongolian Invasions The unparalleled expansion of the Mongols can be attributed to the military genius of one man; born Temujin, but known now as Genghis Khan. When he was eight his father, the chieftain of his clan, was poisoned and Temujin was cast-out. By the time he was twenty-five, he’d fought his way to the position of chieftain among his own people. When he was forty, he’d vanquished all his rival clans and taken the title Genghis Khan (1206-27), as “''Universal Ruler''” of the unified nomadic tribes of the Mongols. In 1209, Genghis Khan launched a journey of conquest, unmatched in its speed and extent since the exploits of Alexander the Great: he captured northern China including Beijing by 1215; Samarkand and Bukhara were taken and sacked in 1220; and by 1223 he was plundering the cities of the Crimea and southern Russia. Several different factors explain the devastating success of Genghis Khan and his armies. The traditional riding skill of the nomads of the steppes plays its part. With stirrups now a standard part of cavalry equipment, the agility of the horsemen was greater than ever, galloping close to release a hail of arrows and wheeling away again. Horsemanship also plays its part in the system of communication which enables Mongol armies to coordinate their strategies; riders galloping between well-equipped staging posts could travel more than 200 miles in a day. Pigeons too were trained for the purpose. However, the single most important element was a ruthless use of two psychological weapons, loyalty and fear. Those who surrendered or resisted bravely would be rewarded and encouraged to join the Mongols against the rest of the world. Cowardice or treachery was punished by the massacre of entire cities of inhabitants for public display; only skilled workers especially engineers would be spared to provide the Mongols with siege weapons. Terror stalked ahead of a Mongol horde like an invisible ally. Usually the citizens need no persuading to open their gates. Genghis Khan returned to Mongolia from his long western campaign in 1225, and was soon again riding to war against northern China once again. In 1227, he was thrown from his horse and died of internal injuries some months later. The family and Mongolian nobility eventually accepted as the Mongol ruler Genghis Khan’s preferred heir, his second surviving son, Ogedai Khan (1229-41). Ogedai would turn his vast inheritance into an empire, and establish a splendid capital city at Karakorum. Genghis Khan spent his life in ceaseless campaigning, but his son preferred to direct several operations simultaneously from his new capital city. Mongol armies made further inroads into China including Korea, though he softened the Mongol policy somewhat to preserve the country in order for the wealth and skills of its inhabitants. That decision would not only give the Mongols access to the Chinese weapons needed to conquer the technologically superior southern Song, but also gain knowledge of governmental techniques to be rulers as well as conquerors of China. In 1236, the Mongols moved northwards into Russia. The small Russian principalities were ill-equipped to resist; Moscow was sacked in 1238 and Kiev in 1240. The Mongols would subsequently dominate the region for nearly two centuries where they were known as the Golden Horde. The Rus princes were given free rein in their own territories as long as they delivered sufficient tribute. One Mongol army advanced into Poland in 1241 where they defeated joint German and Polish forces twice, but withdrew when news came that Ogedai Khan had died. In the generation of Genghis Khan's grandsons, Ogedai, Güyük, and Möngke, the Mongol armies little more than nibbled at the richer regions of China, Persia and the Middle East. It was during the reign of Kublai Khan (1260-94) that full attention was given to China. To signalling his ambitions, the Khan moved his imperial capital to Beijing and announcing a Chinese name for his dynasty; the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). In 1276, Hangzhou, the capital of the surviving Song dynasty, fell to his armies, and three years later all resistance was suppressed. Kublai Khan was determined not to be an outsider in China. He adopted the Chinese bureaucracy, though employed notably more foreigners, including the Venetian explorer Marco Polo, one of the first European to travel the Silk Road to China and document his experience; Il Milione (1300) contains many exaggerations and some curious omissions which probably indicate some was based on hearsay. Never in the history of the Silk Road had there been such stability as the 13th century with the Mongolians policing the whole route. While Kublai Khan was sovereign over a more extensive region than any previous Khan, his authority in the west was only nominal. The Mongol Empire would settle down into three distinct and increasingly independent regions: Kublai's realm of China and Mongolia; the Golden Horde in Russia; and the newly established Mongol realm in Persia and Mesopotamia. The Mongol campaign against Islamic Persia began in 1256. The region had been terrorised in recent years by the secretive Nizari Ismailis sect, or the Assassins, but the extremist sect met its match in the Mongols. One by one, the Assassin fortresses were taken, including the supposedly impregnable Alamut. By 1257, the Muslim horde pressed further to the west, into the even richer lands of the centre of the Islamic world. Baghdad was besieged and sacked in 1258; it is said that 800,000 of the inhabitants were killed, including the Caliph himself who was kicked to death. The Mongols took Aleppo and Damascus the next year. The coastal route south to Egypt seemed open to them, but at the Battle of Ayn Jalut (1260), the Mameluke Sultan of Egypt defeated the Mongols. After their remorseless half century of expansion this battle defined for the first time a limit to the Mongol’s power; Palestine and Syria were preserved for the Mameluke Dynasty in Egypt, and Mesopotamia and Persia remained within the Mongol world. Although the Mongols were conquerors of unparalleled skill, they were in all other respects a primitive people. They tended in different regions to lose their identity, adopting the local customs: Chinese in the east, and Muslim in the west. Mongol power would eventually decline during the 14th century, and leave little behind it. One other effect of the Mongol invasion of the Muslim world was to sufficiently weaken the Muslims in Anatolia, so that the remnants of the Byzantine Empire in Nicaea could consider taking back their home city. In 1261 AD, just a few thousand Byzantine troops were scouting near the city, where they found the Crusader garrison away. Finding an unlocked gate, they entered the city, flung the few guards from the city walls, and seized back Constantinople. The Byzantine Empire would rule in Constantinople for almost two centuries, but the heart had gone out of the Byzantines, and they would remain isolated, weak, and in the end helpless against the Ottoman Turks. Category:Historical Periods